


Beach City Noir

by Ben Barrett (BenBarrett)



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: pre-series AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25326259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenBarrett/pseuds/Ben%20Barrett
Summary: Priyanka Maheswaran is the chief medical examiner for the state of Delmarva. When a series of murders happens in Beach City, she is called in to do the job she has become famous for. Unfortunately, this is not a regular series of murders. They're too precise. Too clean.What is happening? Is there some connection to these murders and the abandoned temple at the end of the beach? And how far will she let this go before she accepts help from the last person in the world she expected?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Beach City Noir

_Well I was born in a small town_   
_And I can breathe in a small town_   
_Gonna die in this small town_   
_And that's probably where they'll bury me_

_-Small Town,_ John Mellencamp

***

The first was Jamie the mailman. When asked later on, his supervisor, Barbara Miller, stated that the last time she saw him was right after she'd handed him that day's post. He'd struck a dramatic pose, as if his workload was too much of a burden, and Barbara (Barb to those who knew her) told him to save it for his improv group. Then he'd walked out the door into the blinding summer sunlight. 

His body was found two days later in an alley near Funland. His flesh had been completely removed, but everything else about him was untouched. The body was nude and swarming with flies.

"I noticed a nasty smell that wasn't around last night," Mr. Smiley, owner of Funland, told investigators. "It about made me throw up. Drove everyone away."

Mr. Smiley went to investigate the source of the smell, expecting to find a dead raccoon or a skunk. Instead, he found Jamie. It was at that point that Mr. Smiley did throw up. News of the murder spread fast, and before long there were people milling around, demanding answers. The state police were there (Beach City had no police force of its own and relied mostly on hired security guards) and ordered everyone to disperse.

"Craziest thing I've ever seen," said Priyanka Maheswaran, the lead medical examiner on the scene. "I don't see a single nick or cut anywhere. The circulatory system is intact, the muscular system is intact. It seems that whoever did this has the surgical skills of a machine. They removed the layers of skin without so much as grazing anything that lay beneath."

Dr. Maheswaran had been a fixture with the Delmarva State Police for over twenty years and had never seen anything like it. She hoped that more in-depth examination of the body would produce some kind of incriminating evidence; a fingerprint, a hair follicle, a drop of sweat. If the monster who committed this heinous act made even one mistake, she'd seize on it and use it to catch him. Or her. Or them. It was what she was good at. What she was known for.

She'd once managed to get a positive ID on a murderer by pulling a single grain of sand from beneath his victim's fingernail. That grain of sand was not from Delmarva, or from any of the other 39 states for that matter. It was found only in a small region along the Gaza strip. As it so happened, a wealthy man from the music industry named Marty (she could never remember his last name) had recently brought in a shipment of Gaza sand for decorative purposes. Deeper digging had revealed a personal connection between the victim and Marty: she was one of Marty's four ex-wives. 

"Real talk," he'd said when the police showed up at his estate with a search warrant, "you're not gonna pin this on me. Real talk. I didn't kill anyone. Real talk."

But they did pin it on him. Marty went down hard. And when the judge passed down life without parole (Delmarva had abolished the death penalty decades earlier), Marty's arrogant swagger and crooked smile suddenly vanished. 

Priyanka's peers fully expected her to do the same in this case. Yet for all of her efforts, she came up with nothing. Officers canvassing Beach City for witnesses came up with nothing. The detectives combing over days of security footage from around town came up with nothing. It seemed the person responsible was going to get away with it. And that really made Priyanka angry.

Then it happened again. A local fisherman named Yellowtail was found floating in the ocean, his skin and clothing missing. His wife Vidalia and their two sons went to pieces. The youngest, a strange child named Onion, let out a primal scream and vanished into the woods. Hours later, the fire department had to come and extinguish the forest fire he'd set.

The older boy, Sour Cream, turned out (to everyone's surprise) to be Marty's estranged biological son. Vidalia admitted, without much prodding, that she'd had a fling with Marty years before, and the end result had been an unexpected pregnancy that had sent Marty running for the hills. Finally thinking they had a lead worth investigating, detectives dropped by to see Marty in prison.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he told them with his crooked grin. "I'm not about cutting off people's skin. Real talk."

"We thought you might have some idea who did," one of the detectives shot back. "This latest victim was raising _your_ son."

"Look, Sour Cream and I don't talk," Marty replied. "He's got his life, I've got-- _had_ \-- mine. What I had with Vidalia was an FWB thing. A few rolls in the hay and then it was over. Like, real talk. It wouldn't have ever lasted. I'm sure she's a great mother, but she was terrible in bed. Real talk."

Detectives talked to Marty for over an hour, trying to establish some kind of connection to the murders that was a bit stronger. That he was the ex-lover of a woman whose husband was murdered while he was serving time for an unrelated crime wasn't exactly going to get them a conviction, or get them any closer to solving the case. Priyanka didn't think he was connected anyway. Why would he be? _How_ would he be? Did he call for a hit on Vidalia's husband? Why? Jealousy? Clearly not. The man had been married four times since he and Vidalia had split, so he didn't seem to be losing any sleep over it.

To make matters worse, the examination of Yellowtail's body returned the exact same results: no evidence. No fingerprints. No saliva. No DNA. No mistakes. 

_It's like the person committing these crimes isn't even human_.

That was ridiculous, though. Of course the perpetrator was human. What else could they be? Extraterrestrials? As laughable as that was, there was one person in town who seemed to think it not only possible, but the most likely explanation. She'd seen the fellow, some neckbeard crackpot named Ronaldo, going around town suggesting that there were aliens who were abducting humans and harvesting their skin. Why? To create fleshcoats, of course. So that they can easily blend in and monitor human activities on Earth. 

It made Priyanka think of some sci-fi version of _Silence of the Lambs._

_It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the probe again._

Absurd. Almost laughably so. Except they had two dead bodies, a truckload of grieving relatives, and a town on the verge of downright panic. There was nothing funny about it. Whoever was doing this was very real and very human. And very sick. If they didn't get some kind of lead soon, he would strike again. 

She went home to her family that night and hugged them tightly. Her husband Doug had always been supportive of her and believed in her abilities even when she doubted herself. He was her rock. Their daughter Connie, precious little thing she was, was the center of their whole world. They'd already had her on a tight leash before: they regulated, monitored and regimented her every activity. Now with a vicious killer on the loose, they tightened their grip even more.

Connie liked to travel down to Beach City on weekends and read books on the beach. Cancelled. 

Connie had tennis practice at a local club twice a week. Cancelled. 

Connie liked to spend afternoons after school at the Buddy Budwick Library. Cancelled. 

She was not to go anywhere but to school-- and they would be dropping her off and picking her up from now on-- and back home. Anywhere else was prohibited.

Priyanka could tell by the look on Connie's face that she didn't like this, but Connie didn't bother to vocalize her objections. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. Their word was law, and they never went back on a rule. That in itself was a rule.

Connie went to bed that night frustrated and sad, but safe. Priyanka watched her go, not letting her own sadness show in her face. She hated treating Connie like a prisoner. She hated that she had to restrict her daughter as if the child had done something wrong.

It was for the best, though. 

She told herself the same thing as she got ready for bed. She told herself the same thing as Doug climbed on top of her. She told herself the same thing as she felt Doug enter her womanly sanctum. She told herself the same thing as Doug slept beside her, the tiny potential children in his seed swimming hopelessly towards a womb long since sterilized. She told herself the same thing as she felt sleep begin to claim her.

And each time, it felt a little more like she was convincing herself of something that wasn't true. After all, the person responsible had only two victims thus far, both of them male and both of them well into adulthood. The perpetrator didn't seem interested in children at all.

The next morning, the body of a young boy, one Peedee Fryman, was found in the dumpster behind the Big Donut. Again, no skin. Again, no clothes. 

Peedee had been the brother of the conspiracy theorist Ronaldo, and he'd only been 13. Just a little older than Connie. This set the townspeople over the edge. They were not willing to sit idly by while some maniac murdered their children. They began to roam the streets with baseball bats and steel pipes in hand. They monitored all traffic in and out of town. If someone came into Beach City who didn't live there, they'd run them off. 

A mob of vigilantes began roaming around, looking for places where a murderer might hide, a lair where he would be able to butcher innocent people undisturbed. The police discouraged this, and warned them against taking the law into their own hands.

"No matter how you feel right now," one detective cautioned, speaking to the mob through a bullhorn, "you have to let the justice system dole out the punishments. We can't stop you from searching, but we can warn you in advance that we will have no choice but to arrest anyone guilty of any act of violence."

Mr. Fryman, the father of the recently deceased child, responded. The detectives took note of the baseball bat in his hands and the large, rusty nails he'd driven through it.

"My boy is dead," he said. There was nothing resembling humanity in his eyes anymore. There was only pain, anger, and a lust for blood. "My boy is dead, and you're threatening to arrest us?"

The kid who'd started the forest fire, Onion, was standing next to him, holding a crowbar. The prying end had been sharpened to two razor points.

"We understand your pain, but we also have to uphold the law, no matter who breaks it," the detective said.

The mob disregarded him and continued to prowl the area. They checked the woods, or rather, what was left of them. They checked the cliffs. They checked the old lighthouse. From this last place, they could look down and see what appeared to be the entrance to some kind of cave.

They lost no time.

Scrambling down the hill and over the rusted remains of what was once a privacy fence, the mob came upon some carving of a multi-armed monster looming over a small recession in the hill. There was a door there that no one could open. On this door were five small spheres of different colors in a star pattern. There was also some sort of circular platform in the floor, though nothing happened when anyone stood on it. It looked as though the original inhabitants of this place were long gone, but several people in the mob were convinced that the sicko who had killed three of their own was hiding behind the unmovable door.

"Explosives!" someone suggested. "Get explosives!"

"Are you kidding?" Mr. Fryman replied. "That'll bring the whole room down on us."

"Well, we have to do something!"

Onion tried his crowbar, to no avail. When that didn't work, he began beating on the door with it. Mr. Fryman joined him with the spiked baseball bat. Several others joined with makeshift clubs. Those who didn't have blunt objects to swing at the door went outside to the beach to look for large rocks and big pieces of driftwood. Ronaldo, older brother of the murdered Peedee, swung his rock at the door like a man possessed.

"This is for my brother!" he screamed, practically foaming at the mouth in rage.

His rock smacked one of the colored spheres and chipped it. There was a deep electric sound, like a buzzing, and all of the spheres began to turn red, starting with the one Ronaldo had hit.

"That's right!" he cried. "Come out and answer for what you did!"

When all the spheres were red, the door did indeed open, but not onto some butcher's lair. Rather, behind the opening was a red maw. It would be best described as the light one sees when staring into a furnace, but without any visible flames. The heat pouring out was unbearable, and the mob backed up a few steps. They couldn't go too far, however, because of the red force barrier that had materialized behind them. They hadn't noticed until they'd tried to get away.

"Aggressive unauthorized entry attempt detected," came a voice from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It sounded like some cross between a living being and a robot. "Use of deadly force authorized."

Out of the red portal came a wave of fire.

"Thrust!" came the disembodied voice. 

The mob screamed as they were set alight. They tried to escape, but there was nowhere to go. They fell over each other, trampled each other. Poor little Onion was crushed beneath the feet of several much larger men. He cried out in pain as his bones broke. Still the fire continued to come. It came and came and came, burning, charring, roasting. It continued to pour out even after the screams fell silent. It continued to pour out after the last body stopped moving. It didn't cease until the last bit of organic matter in the room had been reduced to ashes. Then the barrier lifted, the colored circles faded to their original colors, and the door closed.

"Challengers defeated," came the voice. "Entry attempt failed!"

Then all was quiet. 

The ashes that were once an angry mob of Beach City residents were found a day and a half later. Of course, the police and investigators had no idea what had caused it. They were only able to piece together that this was the missing mob by the weapons they'd been carrying which, miraculously, lay in the ashes completely unscathed.

When Priyanka was called to the scene, she found that there was little she could do.

"I can't work with ashes," she said. "If this had been a regular fire, there would be bones. I can work with bones. Even charred ones. But whatever caused this must have been incredibly hot. Hot enough to destroy even the bones and teeth."

"But why didn't it destroy bats and clubs?" a detective asked her. "If it destroyed bones and teeth, these weapons should have been gone too. I mean, first we get this bizarre string of murders, now we've got an inferno that chooses what it wants to burn?"

Priyanka looked down at the ashes, wishing she could make some sense of everything.

What the hell was going on?


End file.
